Little girls are the devil//Amado Alfaro-Allah

Back in the day, when I was a teenager before I had status, and before I had a pager… Nah, just kidding. I’m not that old! But when I was younger and had my super cool afro I usually get asks questions about it. “How long have you’ve been growing it out for?” or “How do you wash your hair?” I also answer six months for the first questions and for the second one I usually say “Well I put my hair under the water and wash it”. Every day I would get asked about my hair I kind of felt like a celebrity. The attention wasn’t always positive, though. I would get easily picked out super easily like small children called me out frequently and usually said “Mommy look at his hair” at the top of their lungs. This was always super embarrassing because It would draw a whole lot of attention to me. This was life for me usually, one of 3 things would happen first, an old person would lecture me on my hair and what it meant and it was usually really cool but when you’re in a rush you don’t wanna be mean so I kind of just sat there and took it. Second, there would be the people who think they’re out of earshot of me and either complain about my hair and how it’s “inappropriate” or say it looks like a microphone. I have been called Q-tip so many times I’ve lost count. One time I remember closely is when I was at the franklin institute doing my thing when another run of the mill runt shouts “Your hair looks like cotton candy!” her mom is laughing trying to cover her mouth and I just take it as another encounter of people that I’ll probably never see again. Then she said something really peculiar “Mommy why are you laughing, I love cotton candy!” Then things got weird. I was trying to escape this situation with a well placed “Welp!” but the little girl kept talking about how she wanted to eat my hair and the mom telling her why she couldn’t. At this point, I was really tired and not that angry. Then the little girl and the mom came to an agreement “At least can I touch it?” The mom looked at me and I nodded and sighed in defeat as I squatted down. The little girl reached her hand out and started touching my hair, then touching turned into rubbing, then rubbing turned into a sharp bite and pulling on my head. A handful of my hair was in her mouth and in the confusion I was stunned. The mother quickly pulled her daughter away “I’m so sorry!” she was rambling and whining until I stopped her and laughed really hard “Don’t worry about it, I’m super flattered.” The little girl didn’t seem phased about what just happened, in fact, it looked like she was confused on why I didn’t taste like she thought I would. She then started to cry, really loud which made everyone uncomfortable. When the mom asked her what was wrong the little girl kept repeating the same answer “He lied!, His hair is a liar!” At this point, I was holding in my laughter so much that I actually started to cry. The ignorance of a child is really funny to me what can I say, but what could I say or even yet what could I do to make this little girl stop crying. It’s not like I could pull cotton candy out of my pocket (as cool as that would be) so I started thinking. This was one of the reasons I cut my hair it was giving me a little too much attention then I would have liked and also it was the middle of summer and my head gets extremely hot. Don’t get me wrong it’s kind of my trademark style but I wanted to try something new. Then it hit me there was a cart outside of the museum that sells cotton candy. So I tell the mom and the little girl and she stop crying and her eyes light up. When I was outside of the Franklin institute I saw the girl and her mom buying her cotton candy. I guess when people point me out I should feel somewhat flattered because I get to experience situations like this.